Chrome remembers too much. Here's how to make it forget (except what you choose)

Think about the pages you opened this week: an article someone sent you, a store where you checked a price, a forum that popped up on Google. You’ll probably never visit most of them again.

But they still remember you.

What you don’t see

When you open a page, besides showing you its content, it stores small files in your browser: the famous cookies, among other data. Some are useful — they’re why you don’t have to log in every time or why your cart doesn’t empty itself. Many others are there for something else: recognizing you when you show up on another site.

And this isn’t just a handful of shady pages. According to HTTP Archive’s yearly report on the state of the web, 3 out of 4 pages include at least one third-party tracker. Google shows up on 61% of pages and Facebook on at least 22%.¹ In other words, even as you jump from site to site, the same players are often on the other end, building a profile of what you read, search for and buy.

“Wasn’t Chrome getting rid of that?”

For years Google said it would remove third-party cookies — the ones most used for tracking — from Chrome. In 2025 it reversed course: third-party cookies are staying, and controlling them is up to you, through the settings.² So if you don’t change anything, nothing changes.

What about incognito mode?

It’s the go-to answer, and it works: close it and everything is gone. The problem is it also wipes the sessions you actually want to keep. Email, bank, work… logging back into everything every time you open the browser gets old fast.

The middle ground

Chrome has a fairly hidden option that solves exactly that: it deletes everything sites stored once you close it, except on the ones you mark as trusted.

In practice:

• That store you visited once no longer recognizes you next time.
• You’re not left with open sessions on sites you don’t even remember using.
• The browser doesn’t pile up months of data that serve no purpose.
• Your everyday sites stay signed in, just like always.

How to set it up

1. Open the settings

Copy this and paste it into Chrome’s address bar:

chrome://settings/content/siteData

Or from the menu: ⋮ → Settings → Privacy and security → Site settings → On-device site data.

2. Turn on delete-on-close

Under Default behavior, select:

Delete data sites have saved to your device when you close all windows

Nothing changes while you browse: sites work normally. The cleanup happens when you close Chrome.

3. Build your trusted list

Further down, next to “Allowed to save data on your device”, click Add and type each site like this:

• [*.]google.com
• [*.]github.com
• [*.]yourbank.com

The [*.] at the start covers every variant of that site. For example, [*.]google.com includes drive.google.com and calendar.google.com.³

Three tips before you go

• Treat it like a VIP list. Only add what you use every day. Add 50 sites and you lose the point.
• Sign in with “Continue with Google”? Then add both that site and [*.]google.com, or it’ll ask you to log in again.
• Fully quit Chrome. If it keeps running in the background (on Windows it usually hides next to the clock), the cleanup doesn’t happen.

In short

No need to install anything or get paranoid. It’s 3 minutes of setup, and from then on every site you pass through forgets you when you close the browser. The ones you actually use stay right where they were.